A Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Michael Aziken has urged couples who are unable to conceive after trying for one year to seek help from a specialist on infertility.

Aziken, an infertility specialist at the faculty of clinical medicine, College of Medicine, University of Benin, stated this in an interview with UGAMATV.

The expert lamented the practice of delay in seeking medical solutions by couples trying to conceive.

Aziken, who is also the director of the Human Reproduction Research Programme and the Assisted conception unit of the University of Benin Teaching Hospital, also expressed displeasure in the practice of visiting traditionalists and taking random advice from laymen by couples battling infertility.

“After one year of marriage and you have sexual intercourse at least three times a week and the woman is not pregnant, the couple should go and see a doctor but what we find is that it takes three years, four years before they come,” the professor said.

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Aziken, who is also a former Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University of Benin, further noted that women have always been wrongly accused of infertility while it is an issue that can be caused by the man as well.

“People still see infertility as the problem of a woman in this country. But it takes a man and a woman to tangle to have a baby. The man is as guilty as a woman in the cause of infertility in our environment.

“Infection plays a very high role in causing infertility in both the man and the woman.

“And then because of poverty, culture, religion, infertile couples don’t come to the clinic early. When you see them, before they come to a specialist, they have gone to a chemist, church, or tradition.

“They receive counsel from different persons, ‘try this, try that’ so by the time they come, the woman does not have all the time. The age might be against the woman.

“And our men, they push the woman forward first, say go, let them finish with you. You’d find that women would have undergone different procedures while the man has not even shown up even once.

“And in some cases, when the men appear, you discover that they are the ones that have a problem.”